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The fill layer works correctly. It is a solid layer with one color and comes with a mask, so the only thing one can do with it is paintig the mask. You change change its color everytime (before rasterising) with the move tool selected, the brush tool work in this case only for/with the mask.

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Changing the color is easy. With the Fill layer selected in the Layer panel, select a color in the Color panel. Or, with the Fill layer selected, and the Move Tool selected, use the Fill color well in the Context menubar.

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Changing the color is easy. With the Fill layer selected in the Layer panel, select a color in the Color panel. Or, with the Fill layer selected, and the Move Tool selected, use the Fill color well in the Context menubar.

Yes, this is the normal operation. However, after you paint on the fill layer (black punches through), it seems you can no longer change the fill layer colour. This can be confusing if you didn't realize you'd touched it with a brush.

I'm using 1.7 latest version and reporting bugs as I see or suspect them. I'm not checking vs 1.6. If it seems to be a bug in 1.7 then I'm guessing Chris will do what he needs to do.

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Fill layers seem to have have the same sort of embedded mask behaviour as Adjustment layers, correct? This sure may be very irritating when used to other programs.
They, in contrast to adjustment layers seem to lack the option to Alt-Click to make their mask visible for direct editing. I'm using the latest Win Beta. Can you confirm this?

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Fill layers seem to have have the same sort of embedded mask behaviour as Adjustment layers, correct? This sure may be very irritating when used to other programs.
They, in contrast to adjustment layers seem to lack the option to Alt-Click to make their mask visible for direct editing. I'm using the latest Win Beta. Can you confirm this?

They seem a bit different to ordinary masks.

Sequence:

Open a photo layer.

Fill layer above it, any colour.

Paint black on fill layer -- you can see the photo below appearing through.

Paint white on part of blacked area - the fill layer colour is restored.

Alt-click fill layer -- you can no longer see photo below where you painted black.

So it seems you can alt-click, though rather than seeing a black/white mask:

The fill layer colour is shown where black is not painted (rather than white).

The image layer below disappears.

A transparent 'checkerboard' appears in the 'masked' area where black is painted (rather than black).

But, to answer the question, after alt-clicking the fill layer, you can still paint black and white on it to enlarge and change the 'hole'.

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However, after you paint on the fill layer (black punches through), it seems you can no longer change the fill layer colour

I can, using either the Color panel with the layer selected or the Context menu with the layer selected and the Move Tool. Only the areas you did not paint with black will change, of course, because the areas you painted with black are transparent.

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Though I still think it's a bug that you can no longer change the fill colour after painting on it.

Yeah, that should not be the case, as no rasterization is required for masking (at least one can mask image-layers without having to rasterize them).
Also the Alt-Mask-Preview of Fill-Layers looks like a bug to me. I see no reason to deviate from the rule here.

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Though I still think it's a bug that you can no longer change the fill colour after painting on it.

There is no bug there. Your inability to change the Fill layer's colour had nothing to do with the fact that its built-in mask had been edited. It was simply because the Paint Brush was active and, therefore, your attempts to change the colour were changing the colour (which is translated to alpha intensity) with which to paint on the built-in mask. If you switch to the Move Tool or Fill/Gradient Tool then you can change the Fill's colour.

A Fill layer is like an infinitely large vector rectangle with a built-in pixel mask just like the built-in pixel mask of an Adjustment or Live Filter.

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This explains a lot – but how on earth are we supposed to memorize all these workflow-oddities?
Also the author of the linked video clip had misunderstood, that Fill-Layers do actually remain editable...

I have to admit that I'm heavily used to Photoshop – but doing the same things here doesn't contain a single step which makes me think.

Photoshops implementation which requires the User to click the Fill Layer-Swatch to me seems to be a clearly superior and more robust solution: This action may get performed with whatever tool active – also with the Brush-tool. As one targets the Fill-Layer it's unambiguous what tool we want to change the colour for – at the same time an unnecessary – user performed – change of tools is cleverly avoided. It is really such little things which are tremendously important. Affinity apps are still full of steps which could get avoided when workflows were layed out smarter.

I still have not understood why in Affinity Photo Alt-clicking the Fill-Layer doesn't show a black and white mask.

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I still have not understood why in Affinity Photo Alt-clicking the Fill-Layer doesn't show a black and white mask.

I think there is a bug there. In my opinion, alt-clicking the Fill layer thumbnail should reveal the built-in mask as a greyscale image, as happens with other objects (i.e. Adjustments and Live Filters) that have a built-in mask.

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There is no bug there. Your inability to change the Fill layer's colour had nothing to do with the fact that its built-in mask had been edited. It was simply because the Paint Brush was active and, therefore, your attempts to change the colour were changing the colour (which is translated to alpha intensity) with which to paint on the built-in mask. If you switch to the Move Tool or Fill/Gradient Tool then you can change the Fill's colour.

Excellent! That's just what I needed to know. Thanks, @>|<. Obvious once you know how, of course.